


A Game of Bloody Hearts and Broken Bones (This Court Is My Only Home)

by Silent-Wordsmith (Shatteredsand)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: All For the Game/The Foxhole Court AU thing, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Exy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Collegiate Exy, F/F, fictional sport
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-05-24 17:16:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6160765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shatteredsand/pseuds/Silent-Wordsmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Exy is perhaps the most brutal sport in the world and Clarke Griffin wants absolutely nothing to do with it. Unfortunately for her, Arcadia’s team, Trikru, is in need of a new medical assistant and Clarke is in need of money not funneled through her mother. Clarke is sure it’s going to be some hellish kind of awful, but she’s committed to it now.</p><p>Lexa Woods grew up with an Exy racket in one hand and Costia’s in the other. With Costia gone now, Lexa’s turned the game into her life. She has three national collegiate championships, open offers from every team in the NEL after her graduation, and an Olympic gold medal. She’s living the dream, even if it feels empty on the inside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here, have another. Have as many as you want. This time: Sports Queers. Well, one sport queer and one sports nurse queer.

As it turns out, Abby Griffin is more than happy to shell out the extra funds for a moving van and a couple of burly men to lug everything around if it meant that Clarke would be safely ensconced in Arcadia University rather than following through on her threat to “drop out and become a starving artist in some bohemian drug den”. Who would have thought? Of course, if Clarke didn’t already know how drastic any and all measures to loosen her mother’s iron fist on the purse strings had to be, she wouldn’t be here right now.

Here being Arcadia’s athletics dorms and now being seven am on a Tuesday in the beginning of August.

She could have stayed home and enjoyed her summer vacation properly by staying out into the early hours of the morning and sleeping in past noon like any other self-respecting twenty year old. But, no, she’d decided that she actually wanted to have money to do things other than obsessively study a subject she doesn’t mind but doesn’t love, and that meant getting a job. And nothing pays grad students the way the Arcadia Trikru are offering to pay Clarke.

She wonders what it says about her moral standards that she basically sold her soul to the devil for what basically amounts to party funds. Exy almost isn’t even a sport, more of an excuse for very angry people to hit other very angry people while a ball bounces around off the walls and also sometimes off the very angry people. She could have gotten a job at a coffee shop or some other minimum wage hell like everyone else does when they’re a broke college student, but no. No, Clarke had to go and sign up to be Trikru’s new medical assistant.

Thus, here she is, moving back into campus with a month and change between now and when classes actually start.

The athletics dorms are set up more like an apartment building than a college dormitory. Each “dorm” has three single-bed bedrooms, one bathroom, a fair sized living/dining area and a small but fully equipped kitchen. Clarke quietly, but earnestly, seethes at the severe difference between these dorms and the single room, two-bed, half-kitchen dorms with communal showers the “regular” students get stuck in. She’d known before, intellectually, that the athletics dorms were better. Raven, her roommate for the last two years, had spent plenty of time complaining about the luxury she’d stride of pride’d out of and the complete lack of it that she’d come home to. But it’s different seeing it herself, in person, and realizing that while she suffered through sexile and exploding homework last year, those who were proficient with some kind of ball got to live like this. That, now, _she_ gets to live like this, just because she’s signed on to play nursemaid to the Exy team.

Having packed for a significantly smaller space, the moving men have her unloaded in record time, long before any of the other students required to move in early for summer training deign to begin arriving. Further proof that her mother’s demanded seven am appointment hadn’t been necessary so much as it had been a cruel and unusual punishment, probably about the whole threatening to drop-out thing. Clarke tips generously—it’s all on Abby’s card, after all, and spite is an inheritable trait—and then stares blankly at her neatly stacked boxes.

It’s still ridiculously early, and Clarke is seriously considering flopping down onto her mattress and napping until other people start moving in, but knowing herself the way she does, she knows that’s not really an option. If Clarke lies down, she’ll sleep until something or someone wakes her up and she’ll put off unpacking entirely until it becomes unavoidable. Better to just do it now and get it over with. Besides, she’s going to need more stuff unless she wants her room to look Spartan at best and barren at worst, now that she knows she’ll actually have the space for it. That means unpacking and sorting out what she already brought so she knows what she needs to go out and pick up.

She sent a solid hour doing that, but it was still only nine-thirty when she hung up her last blouse and tucked the last sketch pad into her school provided desk drawer. Eyeing the remaining space, and there was rather a lot more of it than Clarke had been expecting now that the boxes were empty and their contents shuffled into the appropriate places, she realized that the first thing she was going buy was an easel. She hadn’t had the space for canvas work in her old dorms, had assumed she wouldn’t here either, but there’s room enough if she’s willing to sacrifice any other previously considered space-fillers like a small entertainment system and tv. Which she is. She can Netflix on her laptop, the same as she had for her last two years at Arcadia, and she has no doubt that the living space will find itself turned into an entertainment room, courtesy of her yet to arrive roommates.

That decided, she closes the door to her room behind her, locks the dorm up like she’d never been there to start with, and heads on out to Blick’s to get supplies. She still has Abby’s card—for school supplies—and Clarke can justify this by pointing out that she _does_ have an art elective this term.

OooO

When Clarke gets back to her room—her apartment within the dorm? Her place.—it’s after one in the afternoon, because it’s an hour long drive, both ways and Clarke doesn’t know how to _not_ linger in Blick’s. Finally being after noon, the parking lot that had been completely deserted when Clarke had arrived this morning is now full of student athletes and their friends and family carrying boxes out of cars and trucks and vans and into the building. Clarke watches them for a long moment, suddenly coming to the uncomfortable realization that she doesn’t know any of these people. Her friend group, developed during her last two years, is comprised almost entirely of students studying equally demanding subjects as Clarke. Her friends are fellow nerds, not a jock to be counted among them, and this is going to be like starting freshman year all over again, in terms of meeting people and making friends with her neighbors.

Why did she do this to herself?

Determining that she doesn’t want to try and carry up her easel and other supplies with a bunch of other people jockeying for space in the hallways and elevators, Clarke drives through the parking lot and heads over to Trigeda, the Trikru’s Exy Court. She doesn’t need to show up there until tomorrow, when the Trikru would have their first practice of the season, but she figures now is as good a time as any to get to know the lay of the land over there. She definitely doesn’t want to try and do it tomorrow. Trikru have their first practice at the ungodly hour of six am; Clarke has to go help Jackson with the team’s physicals, and she has no desire to try and mentally map the place while half-asleep. Or, worse, actually needing to treat one of the boneheads and looking incompetent when she doesn’t know where anything is.

She may have sold her soul for the cold hard cash, but she has a considerably higher price on her pride.

Trigeda Court is massive. Built to comfortably seat sixty-five thousand screaming Exy fans, Arcadia University had spared no expense in the construction and maintenance of what was, admittedly, its most profitable team. Brown and green walls carefully made to look like a looming forest jut into the sky, visible from a distance long before Clarke actually pulls into the lot. Upon closer inspection, the tree job is so well done that the illusion remains, even though Clarke knows it’s an illusion. She can all but hear the wind whistling through the branches that aren’t actually there, and she can nearly feel the heavy weight of a dozen fierce eyes burrowing into her from the tree people meant to be hidden in the green. It’s distinctly unsettling, but Clarke forces herself to carry on. It’s just a stadium, and its intimidation factor is by design, meant to psych out opposing teams.

The passcode to get into the building is personalized so the computer can keep track of who’s letting themselves into the building, and when, and it takes Clarke a minute to remember hers. The light switches to green with a soft beep—a ridiculous amount of security, really, in Clarke’s opinion. It’s a college Exy court, not Fort Knox—and lets her turn the handle.

She’d been given a brief tour of the stadium when she’d interviewed for the position, but that had been a month and a half ago and Clarke hasn’t had the time or the inclination to come back and learn the layout until today. Maybe she should have, though, because it only takes her about thirty seconds to get hopelessly lost. The last time she’d been in the building, she’d gone in through the public gates used to grant access primarily to fans. Everything looks completely different starting in the staff only section.

It doesn’t take long for Clarke to resign herself to wandering rather aimlessly and hoping that something familiar presents itself. A few minutes after that, she thinks she hears something and orients herself towards it. The hallway ends in two branches, one labeled “Women’s” and the other “Men’s” and Clarke makes the radical intuitive lea that she’s found the locker rooms. Not exactly what she’d been looking for, but not a bad thing to find.

The noise from before is clearer, now, a rhythmic thudding. Hoping that it’s not just a loose bolt in the air conditioning or the like, Clarke continues to follow the sound through the women’s changing room, past the showers, and out to the outer edges of the court. The door meant to complete the separation of the players—and the rubber ball they spend an hour and a half slinging around—and the fans is wide open, but Clarke isn’t about to go wandering onto the court. That sounds like an excellent way to start her year off with a concussion via ball to the face.

Instead, she ambles over to the bench to watch and wait.

The player on the court is in full gear, making them unidentifiable to Clarke’s inexperienced eye. A woman, if Clarke had to guess, though, just by the height. She’s running in zigs and zags across the court, tossing the ball against a single point on the plexi-glass wall with unnerving accuracy before catching the ball on the rebound and shifting to sling it back again. There’s no one else one the court, which makes sense since there’s no practice scheduled today.

Clarke doesn’t mean to watch for so long. She’d thought that the player would stop sooner rather than later or that she’d poke her head in and ask for directions if it went on much longer, but she finds herself getting lost watching the player’s motion and rhythm for longer than intended. She gets so lost, in fact, that it isn’t until the ball comes to a rest, caught in the racket and not re-released against the wall, that Clarke even realizes that she’s just spent the better part of an hour watching this player drill. More importantly, the player has now noticed Clarke.

Quick efficient steps towards the door, nearly a military march, and the player is ripping her helmet—and, yes, it is definitely a her, oh wow, _nice_ —she pauses in the doorframe, glaring something fierce at Clarke.

“This is a closed practice.” Her voice is admirably steady for someone who just spent a good chunk of time physically exerting herself. She’s not even short of breath.

“Does it count as a practice if you’re the only one on the court?” Clarke doesn’t really care about the answer; she mostly just wants to wipe that look of the other girl’s face.

“Yes. Leave before I have to call security.”

Okay, wow. Girl’s got no chill, apparently.

“Well, that escalated quickly.”

“I do not have time for a stalker this year.” The words are brusque to the point of condescending, and it makes Clarke want to fire back like a bad habit. It’s not the most professional of impulses, but Clarke doesn’t have to be a professional until tomorrow, so. Look, she’s never claimed to be a _mature_ adult, just _an_ adult.

“Someone thinks highly of themselves. Do you have time to point the new medical assistant towards the Team Physician’s office?” Clarke can’t help the way her lips twist into a smug smirk. A stalker. Please. The girl is hot, sure, but she’s not _that_ hot. Probably. Okay, so Clarke can see the appeal with those green eyes and all that dark, braided hair and what she’s sure is an absolutely killer body hidden underneath all those armored pads. But, still. It’s the principle of thing. Also, the huge stick Clarke can practically see jammed up her rectum can’t entice many suiters.

“Clarke Griffin.” She says then, which, um, okay. What? “Your office is adjacent to the women’s locker room. You must have walked past it to get here.”

“Uh. _I_ don’t have time for a stalker this year either.” It’s not her best comeback, but she’s still caught more than a little off guard. Clarke hasn’t met any of Trikru’s players yet. The only people she’s had dealing with have been Dr. Rothberg and Coach Kane; she doesn’t even know if the team actually knows that they’ve picked up another medical aid.

“I know everyone Kane even considers putting on this team.”

“I wasn’t aware Trikru had signed an assistant coach.” Clarke feels like that would have been news. The kind that Clarke would have heard in passing, at least, if not from ESPN. A medical assistant is nothing, completely irrelevant to the game and its players until someone gets a broken nose, fractured rib, or a concussion. Even, then, her name won’t be shouted down the wire so everyone can know who, exactly, is stitching up this split brow or icing that busted lip. A new member on the coaching staff, though? Even with Clarke’s distaste for the sport and general avoidance of it as a conversational topic couldn’t have shielded her from that kind of news.

“Trikru does not need an assistant coach.” The girl is looking at Clarke like she’s stupid. The only person who looks at pre-meds like they’re stupid are people with normal majors during finals, wondering why a person would choose that kind of stress—and even then, it’s way more pitying than mocking, unlike this particular look—and Raven Reyes, the certified genius dual majoring in mechanical engineering and astrophysics—AKA, an actual _rocket scientist_ in the making—and this chick doesn’t get to look down on Clarke just because she’s hot and she knows how to throw a rubber ball into a square. “Kane is sufficient, and where he is not, Trikru has me.”

“And you are?”

She blinks at that, seemingly caught off guard. “I am Lexa Woods.”

Oh.

 _Oh_.

Clarke doesn’t often feel like an idiot—it’s not a feeling she has often while sober, anyways—but she feels a bit like one now. It’s not that she doesn’t know who Lexa Woods is. Clarke is pretty sure the whole goddamned world knows who Lexa Woods is right now, with the 2016 Olympics just past and Team USA’s big win in Exy over Japan for the first time. Talk had abounded over how pivotal Lexa Woods had been to the US’s win, how it was a shame that she was still stuck playing college ball by the ERC when she clearly deserved to be on a professional team, that she was wasting years of potential playing in the NCCA simply because the ERC required four years of college Exy before a player could go professional. And it’s not that Clarke hadn’t realized that Lexa Woods goes to her school, because at least one person at any given party wants to try and talk about sports in general and Exy specifically and Lexa Woods had been kind of a big deal even before she was an Olympian.

Clarke’s just, you know, never actually seen her in person before and she doesn’t watch the news so much as she lets it play in the background and picks up things through osmosis.

“Oh.”

“Can I return to my practice now, Clarke? Or should I wait for you to scrounge up a pen?”

Clarke rolls her eyes and shoos the Striker away with a gesture. “Shockingly, not everyone wants your autograph.”

“I know.” Lexa carefully buckles into her helmet and starts back onto the court. “That’s why I told Kane to pick you.”

She‘s back to her drills before Clarke can gather her wits enough to try and respond, and it’s too late by then.

What did that even mean? Clarke had been ninety percent sure that she wasn’t going to get this job—actual, licensed, medical professionals with years of experience had interviewed; a third year pre-med student shouldn’t have even been in the running—and when she had gotten it, she’d been mostly okay with the idea that it had been a result of nepotism. Jackson Rothberg had done his residency under Abby Griffin, once upon a time. It wasn’t unreasonable to think that he might have picked his old mentor’s daughter over more qualified applicants when those applicants were technically _overqualified_ for what Trikru needed.

But, apparently, he hadn’t. Apparently, Lexa freaking Woods had.

What the actual fuck.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a terrible human being and the worst sort of updater. I'm sorry.

Lexa had been right, the medical assistant’s office was an offshoot of the women’s locker room and Clarke really had wandered right past it without noticing. She makes a mental note as she walks past it a second time, her plans of familiarizing herself with the stadium abandoned. It’s been a long day, and Clarke had already wasted plenty of time watching the fluid motions of Lexa Woods running through her drill.

All Clarke wants to do is go home and crawl into bed with her sketchpad and not think for a little while.

Of course, she remembers when she pulls into a spot in the athletics dorms’ parking lot, she has roommates to contend with now. People to meet, rules and boundaries likely to be set, all that good stuff that Clarke doesn’t actually want to have to deal with. Such is the way it goes.

The Exy team has the entire third floor dedicated to housing them. That’s five three-bed, apartment-like rooms for twelve players, plus Clarke. Technically, that means that Clarke could have lucked out and drawn only a single roommate, and that roommate might even be out celebrating her last day of freedom before training. But Clarke isn’t optimistic that’ll happen. Her luck’s not that good.

Only, surprise, there’s no one waiting for her in the dorm. Everything looks exactly the same as she’d left it this morning. The door is still locked, and Clarke can see no evidence that anyone has come and moved in their possessions in the hours she’s been away. The living space is still empty, the doors to the rooms she’d left alone still closed. No miscellaneous kitchen stuffs shoved into cabinets.

Well, that’s nice. Clarke guess that since she’s not actually part of the team—more staff than anything else, though too much of a student to be required to find her own accommodations for the year—that whoever is in charge of assigning the rooms decided that she didn’t need roommates. Or that any potential roommates didn’t deserve to have to spend their off hours living with someone who would be legally obligated to report if they broke any of the guidelines dictating whether or not they could play. Maybe someone got cut—the team only needs nine players to compete, after all—or washed out or something.

Clarke doesn’t have a problem with that. She already has her group of friends, disconnected from the sports world. She isn’t in need of forced cohabitation to make new ones. She’ll do just fine with all this space to herself.

OooO

Dear gods, why?

Her alarm goes off at five am, so she has time to properly get ready before making the drive out to Trigeda for her first official introduction to the team. Signing on with the Trikru was the worst idea she’s ever had. The sun’s not even up yet, this is a _crime_.

Clarke wants to forgo looking her best and showing up on time for twenty more minutes of sleep, but she can’t quite bring herself to stomach the idea. She shouldn’t have this job; she’s not actually a medical professional. She’s not even a medical _student_ , yet. But Jackson had gone out on a limb and given it to her, and Kane had agreed to it, and, apparently, even Lexa freaking Woods wanted her courtside for the upcoming season. Clarke doesn’t have it in her to turn her back on that for a few extra minutes of warm unconsciousness, however nice it may sound.

“Responsibility is awful.” She groans out into the still darkness of her room.

Then, she reminds herself that she is an adult, and this is her job, and nobody made her interview for the position, and certainly no one had forced her to take it when it had been so unexpectedly offered. She made this bed, time to go lie in it. Or rise from it, as the case may be.

Doesn’t mean she has to like it, though. Clarke stumbles from her bedroom to the bathroom without bothering with the lights. Lights are bright and bright hurts and Clarke doesn’t even care about the numerous things she manages to walk into or trip over in the dark. This plan, tragically, cannot continue once she’s actually in the bathroom. Clarke is talented at a great many things, but showering and doing her hair and make-up in the dark is not one of them.

It’s a quick shower and a light face. Really, just a little eyeliner and some lip gloss because she doesn’t need the hassle of trying to maintain her make-up while dealing with a bunch of hyped-up jocks eager to finish their physicals and get back on the court. Which is a stupid practice, in Clarke’s opinion. None of them should be stepping onto the court until after their physicals, not being pulled off it two at a time for her and Jackson to examine so the others can continue on. It’s impractical. They should wait for the medical assurance that all the players are fit to play before sending them out, but no. Apparently that would be a waste of time and resources.  Like Trigeda was going somewhere if it wasn’t immediately put to use.

But Clarke isn’t staffed to point out the stupidities of Trikru’s practicing schedules. She’s there to give the players their physicals at the beginning of each term and patch them up when the game gets more violent than their abundance of padded armor could protect them from. That’s it. Beginning and end of her duties to Trikru.

So, she gets dressed and does her make-up and drives over to Trigeda.

Unlike yesterday, there are cars parked outside Trigeda. Two Jeeps, and some kind of SUV, and Clarke assumes the team must have carpooled to get all twelve players to the stadium in three cars. That or half the team overslept and nobody thought to wake them for the first practice of the season. Clarke remembers how intense Lexa Woods had been at her informal solo practice and shudders to imagine what she’d be like at an official team practice; she hopes for everyone’s sake that nobody had been cruel enough to leave even a single member of Trikru behind at the dorms.

It’s easier finding her way to the office now that she’s walked the layout, and she thinks she gets there with plenty of time before practice—and her examinations—starts.  She thinks that until she gets to the hall that branches into the separate locker rooms.

All twelve of Trikru’s players are geared up with their helmets held carefully under their arms, standing at the strictest attention Clarke has ever seen outside of Hollywood’s portrayal of soldiers on a military base. Stricter even than that. There’s a chance they might actually pull something if they put anymore tension in their spines.

Lexa Woods stands regal and fierce before them, and she doesn’t look like a student. She doesn’t look like a team captain, or even a team coach. There’s some kind of energy about her, some kind of massive, demanding presence. She looks like a warlord standing before her army.

Clarke sneaks a look at her phone, just to be sure that isn’t as late as she now feels. Five fifty-two. She’s fucking _early,_ and Lexa Woods still has her team up and assembled before Clarke managed to walk through the door. That’s just so unnecessary.

“This is Clarke Griffin.” Lexa introduces without turning away from her team to face her. Holy fucking shit, how the hell had she even known Clarke was _there_? What kind of dark sorcery is Lexa playing with? What kind of deal had she made with the devil? “She’s Jackson’s new assistant. You will treat her with the same respect you treat any and all members of staff, or you will deal with me. For those of you thinking to tempt my wrath, you must be new here. I’m Lexa Woods, you may call me Heda; if you inch even a fraction of your little toe out of line, _I_ will call _you_ ‘cut’.”

“Can…can you do that?” A boy asks, voice weak with hesitation.

“You have a four year contract with the Arcadia Trikru, each and every one of you. Each and every one of those contracts stipulates that you may be cut at any time, without prior notice, at the discretion of any member of the coaching staff or your team captain. Who is your team captain, Sekkon?”

“You are, Heda.” The boy answers, strength in his words now and, Clarke thinks, more than a hint of chastisement.

“Then I suppose I can do that. Any more questions?” A heavy silence for a moment, and then. “Excellent. To this year’s freshmen: welcome to Trikru. We will be your clan and your kin for as long as you wear the jersey and for the rest of our lives, even after we graduate to different national teams and different jerseys.”

There’s a small break for a rousing cheer from the rest of the team, a few of the younger looking players—presumably the freshmen in question—slightly more tentative to join in. Lexa lets them go on for a moment, then raises her hands with a snap of wrists that has the twelve of them silencing immediately.

“Trikru runs three-a-days during summer training. You will arrive at 0600, and you will train for four hours. You will break for lunch and return by 1100 to train for another four hours. You will break for dinner and then return to training by 1500 to train another four hours. If you do not think yourself capable of such a grueling regimen, you have signed with the wrong team. Trikru does not give up. Trikru does not make excuses. Trikru does not get tired, does not get hungry, does not fail. You will be here, in accordance with the schedule I have just given you, or you are not Trikru. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Heda!”

“Quint, Artigas, you’re up in Jackson’s office; Octavia, Indra, with Clarke.”

Lexa makes another imperious hand gesture and, at once, the team disperses in three directions. The boy who had questioned his captain and an older guy turn towards the men’s locker room—presumably where Jackson’s office is—two girls head towards the woman’s locker room where Clarke’s is, and the rest of the team bustles down the main hall towards the court.


End file.
